The Chicago Transit Authority’s new Washington/Wabash L Station racked up oodles of likes, plus one’s, and shares over its inaugural weekend. And that was in real life. Social media folk liked it, too. In its first few hours of operation, reactions from the crowds of travelers eager to get a whiff of that new train station smell ranged from a star-struck “Oh,...

The Chicago Transit Authority’s most historic elevated rail station is about to get a big renovation. The City of Chicago has issued construction permits for the renovation of the Quincy/Wells station (220 South Wells Street), which serves the Brown, Purple, Orange, and Pink Lines. It’s also a transfer point for grabbing an Amtrak or Metra train out of Union Station, or a...

The Chicago Transit Authority’s new Washington/Wabash L Station racked up oodles of likes, plus one’s, and shares over its inaugural weekend. And that was in real life. Social media folk liked it, too. In its first few hours of operation, reactions from the crowds of travelers eager to get a whiff of that new train station smell ranged from a star-struck “Oh, shiny!” to a fully suburban “Awesome!”...

The Chicago Transit Authority’s most historic elevated rail station is about to get a big renovation. The City of Chicago has issued construction permits for the renovation of the Quincy/Wells station (220 South Wells Street), which serves the Brown, Purple, Orange, and Pink Lines. It’s also a transfer point for grabbing an Amtrak or Metra train out of Union Station, or a ride on certain long-distance bus lines....

The Chicago Transit Authority has announced it will spend $18 million renovating the historic Quincy L Station in the Loop. The project is just the latest in a series of CTA station additions and upgrades in recent years, including the ongoing $75 million consolidation of the Madison/Wabash and Randolph/Wabash Stations into the new Madison/Wabash Station on the opposite side of The Loop. The Quincy Station is best known as the only...

Sure, for weeks there have been demolition crews crawling all over the 119-year-old elevated train station at 29 North Wabash Avenue busy turning it into a memory. But the paperwork allowing the demolition of the oldest train station on Wabash Avenue only just came through a couple of days ago: WRECK AND REMOVE AN EXISTING MADISON ST. LOOP ELEVATED CTA STATION. Such is life in the big city. The Chicago Architecture Blog’s...

A group of Chicago artists want to take the “seamy” out of the underbelly of the L in The Loop. The Wabash Lights is an art project that envisions hundreds of light tubes underneath the L tracks along Wabash Avenue. The tube colors can be changed and animated at will. The idea is to brighten up the area, which has underdone significant gentrification in recent years, but still has a way to go. We envision the tube...

The folks at the office supply store where Nick Fury shops must figure he uses a typewriter, and that he doesn’t do it very well. Fury goes through a lot of typewriter correcting tape. It’s not inked words that he’s covering, though. Fury is creating art and using a nontraditional medium. It takes a keen eye and steady hand to place the correcting tape in straight lines and curves to develop visual images, but Fury has the technique...

Construction is expected to start in the next few months on Chicago’s newest L station: Washington and Wabash. The start of work was delayed a year while work was completed on an environmental impact statement. That statement was presented to the public at the end of February, and can also be seen here. The public comment period on the project closed at the end of last week. The Chicago Transit Authority explains that, “the...

As the Chicago Transit Authority continues trying to cram more and more trains into the Loop’s elevated rail loop, new bottlenecks are emerging. At the same time, some of the CTA’s infrastructure is in a desperate state of repair. So, what’s being proposed on Wabash Avenue will kill two pigeons with one stone. The CTA is going to close its Randolph and Wabash station along with its Madison and Wabash...

The year-long project of replacing the Wells Street Bridge over the main branch of the Chicago River reaches another critical phase this weekend. The north leaf of the the double-decker bascule bridge will be replaced with a brand new 2,100-ton leaf, constructed off-site and floated into place a couple of weeks ago. The removal of the northern half of the span means that CTA trains won’t be able to cross it from 10pm tonight...

The West Loop is home to a wide array of architectural styles, and they aren’t only evident in buildings. The two CTA elevated stations separated by one mile on West Lake Street also span 120 years of design and history. Most commuters I passed walking up the stairs to the Ashland Green Line Station probably gave little thought to what was going on in the world in 1883 when the structure was built. For the record, Grover...